Machiavelli News Network on this week's events

MNN Reports: Earlier this week, Al-Qaeda launched planned attacks on U.S. embassies across the Middle East, resulting in several deaths, including that of the U.S. ambassador to Libya.

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney blasted President Obama's Middle East policy, including the initial response by the American embassy in Egypt, which said it agreed with the protesters (quickly taken down and criticized by the White House).

In New York, Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke ostensibly launched a new, open-ended round of quantitative easing in response to the weakening economy. It was also a response to comments by Mitt Romney, who said he wants to find a new Fed chief. New QE should temporarily boost the economy and markets enough to get Obama reelected.

MNN has learned that Federal Reserve officials also discussed Middle East policy. Several Fed governors argued that QE2 is clearly a failed policy now. The rising food prices sparked by QE2 led to riots in the Arab world that ultimately turned into the Arab Spring, which have morphed into extremist and anti-American violence across the region. Chairman Bernanke pointed out that while the first round of food price increases didn't work, the next one will work because it will really cause chaos in the Middle East, especially for Egypt, which will exhaust its foreign reserves and be unable to pay for imported food.

Russian President Putin also weighed in on the chaos:

"I very much hope this tragedy will push all of us together to intensify the joint - and I want to emphasise, joint - struggle against extremism and terrorist threats," he told reporters in the Black Sea resort city of Sochi.